Today, disposable surface wipe articles, such as disposable hand wipes, baby wipes, paper towels, facial tissues, toilet tissues and other cleaning articles, are widely used in personal (animate surface) and environmental (inanimate surface) hygiene, such as in the care of infants and incontinent individuals as a means of cleaning (removing) bodily wastes and other contaminants. These articles have generally replaced reusable, washable cloth articles as the preferred means for these applications because of their convenience and reliability.
Conventional disposable surface wipes, such as the cleaning articles listed above, do not provide any indication of the presence of, or the efficacy of removal of, bodily waste contamination which is undetectable by unaided human vision. This is an important limitation due to the potential for skin irritation (in the case, for example, of feces) if waste residue is left on the skin and/or the potential for further spreading waste to other contacted surfaces thereby spreading potentially harmful organisms or other waste components to such surfaces.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide disposable surface wipe articles or gloves that respond to fecal or other bodily waste contamination by detecting and signaling the presence of the contamination to the user of the article.
The present invention is directed to a disposable surface wipe having a sensor which detects bodily waste contamination on a surface contacted by the article and which provides a signal indicating the presence of such contamination, preferably by detecting a component of the waste normally present in waste excreted by healthy individuals and not a component infrequently present in the waste due to special circumstances related to the health or other transient condition of the excreter.
In one preferred embodiment, the signal provided by the sensor is visible to a user of the article. In another preferred embodiment, the article includes a substrate which incorporates the sensor. In yet another preferred embodiment, the article is a cleaning article that includes a substrate which incorporates the sensor and which is useful for cleaning waste contamination from a surface.
While the specification concludes with claims that particularly point out and distinctly claim the present invention, the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings describe the invention and preferred embodiments thereof.